The showstopper in Vaginal Davis’s new exhibition, Magnificent Product, at MoMA PS1 is a big phallus tucked right into a rotating mattress, titled “The Wicked Pavilion: Tween Bedroom” (2021). This large recreation of the multidisciplinary artist’s preteen bed room winks satirically on the viewer: A big erect penis — supposedly a logo of masculine virility — is surrounded by pink, culturally coded as female. On the wall within the nook of the bed room is an image of activist Angela Davis, to whom the artist nods along with her nom de plume.
Each work by Vaginal Davis performs some type of sport with scale. That previous adage “size matters” doesn’t totally articulate the ways in which Ms. Davis (as she’s usually referred to) enlarges and shrinks her material, however it displays the punk undercurrents of her artwork. The fairy godmother of the Los Angeles queercore scene, she introduced gender-bending to the punk and hardcore music scenes of LA and New York within the 1970 and ’80s earlier than additional establishing herself as an artist and curator.
Vaginal Davis, “The Wicked Pavilion: Tween Bedroom” (2021) (picture Isa Farfan/Hyperallergic)
For her survey, Ms. Davis oscillates between the miniature and the monumental as a method to jolt viewers out of complacency and see the imagery anew. Every room at PS1 capabilities like a present inside a present, with an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek title and a special style or theme. For the one-room set up “Sucking Her Unborn Cock – Archivist Headache Wall” (Seventies–current), she coalesces innumerable tiny items of ephemera and images that painting herself and members of her counterculture. Conversely, “HAG – small, contemporary, haggard” (2012) is an enclosed room with a sharply slanted ground that forces viewers to confront massive sculptures of Mariah Carey and Justin Timberlake created from sourdough and preservatives. The ground slant is so excessive that footing can really feel unstable. The partitions are lined with silkscreened silhouettes of ladies’s faces, which Ms. Davis calls “Lesbiana Domesticity wallpaper” (2012).
Ms. Davis’s use of scale to coax double takes is most evident in “The Wicked Pavillon: the Fantasia Library” (2021). Utilizing nail polish and make-up, she creates small likenesses of the queer, Black, and punk writers who encourage her on the again of postcards and different ephemera. For instance, the small scale of an Octavia Butler portrait attracts us in shut, maybe to ponder the boundaries of make-up as a medium and a logo for the underappreciated inventive geniuses who don’t occur to be pale, male, and straight as a nail.
In distinction, the sheer quantity of archival ephemera featured within the one-room set up “Sucking Her Unborn Cock – Archivist Headache Wall (1970s-present) feels colossal. Hundreds of photos and flyers are stashed behind curtains, so viewers have to literally peak behind the veil. Vaginal Davis once remarked in an interview that “High femme insight and determination on all matters gives my art that special oomph that draws people in from all walks of life.” That oomph is amplified by a scaling up and cutting down that pulls us in earlier than going through us with the artist’s grand legacy and iconoclastic presence.
Element of Vaginal Davis “Sucking Her Unborn Cock – Archivist Headache Wall (Seventies – Current) (all images by Isa Farfan/Hyperallergic)
Curator Hendrik Folkerts poses inside an set up by Vaginal Davis, “HAG – small, contemporary, haggard” (2012)
Set up view of Vaginal Davis, “The Wicked Pavillon: the Fantasia Library” (2021)
Set up View of Vaginal Davis “Sucking Her Unborn Cock – Archivist Headache Wall (Seventies–current)
Element of Vaginal Davis “Sucking Her Unborn Cock – Archivist Headache Wall (Seventies–current)
Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product, continues at MoMA PS1 (22–25 Jackson Avenue, Lengthy Island Metropolis, Queens) by March 2, 2026. The exhibition was organized by Hendrik Folkerts; the New York iteration was organized by Jody Graf and Sheldon Gooch.
